Sermon
Forgiveness
Which
is the greater sin: to sin against God or to sin against another human
being? Most people would probably answer
that the sin against God is the greater sin.
The correct answer is a sin against a human being is a sin against
God. The word “sin”, in Greek “Amartia”
means “to miss the mark.” As if you are
aiming at a target, you throw your object or shoot you arrow and you miss the
target. That is one definition for
sin—to miss the mark that God wants us to hit.
But what is the target? What is
it that God wants us to aim for? The
greatest commandments that God has given us require us to love God and to love
our neighbor. So the target we are
aiming for is love. And so sin is not
just missing the mark, but sin is also more simply defined as failure to
love. Failure to love is manifested in
sins that are against God and against other people. All sin is of the same weight—there are no
mortal sins, or seven deadly sins, in the Orthodox Church. So when we sin against another person, we are
sinning against God as well.
When
we sin, we turn our back on God, we fail to follow God’s Commandments and we
fail to love as God taught us to love.
The wages of sin is death, according to
This
morning’s Gospel lesson is a parable about forgiveness. In the verses before this morning’s Gospel
begins, Peter comes up to Jesus and asks Him “How often shall my brother sin
against me, and I forgive him? Up to
seven times? Jesus said to him, “I do
not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. A quick calculation tells us that seventy
times seven is 490 times. That’s a lot
of forgiveness.
Jesus
then begins to tell a parable that compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who
wished to settle accounts with his servants.
One servant was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. Ten thousand talents was a sum of money
greater than the man could earn in his lifetime—it was an impossible debt to
pay off. And when the man was not able
to pay the ten thousand talents, the master commanded that he be sold, with his
wife and children and all that he had and that payment be made. In other words, to pay off this debt would
have forced this man and his whole family a lifetime of slavery. The servant begged the master for forgiveness,
beseeching him to have patience and the man would pay everything. Obviously, he could not pay ten thousand
talents, but he was certainly willing to work hard to do so. The master forgave the man the entire
debt.
That
servant went out and found one of his servants, who owed him a hundred denarii,
a sum equivalent to 100 days’ wages. The
forgiven servant seized that servant by the throat and said “Pay what you
owe.” The man asked for him to be
patient and he would repay the debt—he didn’t ask for forgiveness of the debt,
but he asked for patience to pay the debt off.
But the man would not be patient and ordered the man to be thrown in
prison until he could repay the debt, which of course would be impossible to do
while in prison. Other servants went to
the master and reported what had happened.
Then the master called the first servant back and said “You wicked
servant! I forgave you all of your debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on
your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?” And the master threw that man in jail. The moral of the story, so with God do to
each person who does not forgive his brother from his heart.
So,
what then, is forgiveness? Is
forgiveness “a get out of jail free card” so to speak, a get off the hook
card? I do something wrong to you, I ask
for forgiveness, you forgive me, then I wrong you again, I ask for forgiveness,
and you see, a vicious cycle ensues.
This is not what forgiveness is.
Forgiveness is the opportunity to correct a wrong and then making a
relationship whole again. So, when one
asks for forgiveness, they are, in a sense, asking, “Give me the opportunity to
correct the wrong I have made and make our relationship whole once again.” So the act of asking for forgiveness is an
act that requires action, and first it requires humility—it requires us to
humble ourselves and recognize we have done wrong, to ask for the opportunity
to correct the wrong, and the willingness to do whatever is asked of us in
order to correct the wrong. And when
someone comes to us and asks for forgiveness, our obligation is to give them an
opportunity to correct the wrong and once again make the relationship
whole. When someone asks for
forgiveness, this requires humility not only on the part of the person asking,
but the person being asked. It requires
the person being asked to put away anger and to think in a prayerful way, what
can this person do in order to correct a wrong?
The motivation to forgive comes from this parable—we all sin. We all expect God to give us
forgiveness. Therefore, we need to be
ready to forgive others. If we cannot
forgive others, how can we expect God to forgive us?
Some
mistakes can be forgiven with a simple apology, I made an honest mistake, I
will do better next time. More serious
mistakes require restitution in order for sincere forgiveness to be given. For instance, you can’t steal $100,000 from
someone and simply say “I’m sorry.” In
order for things to be made right, restitution must be made. Probably the most difficult sins to forgive
are the ones that involve a breach of trust—in fact it is easier to forgive
than to trust. We can forgive an
egregious indiscretion but have a hard time trusting someone ever again. God, however, does not require us to confide
in people, only to forgive and to respect them.
There may be some breaches of trust that cannot be repaired but there
should be no sins that cannot be forgiven.
As
I read the parable again, neither of the servants that owed their masters money
asked for forgiveness—they asked for patience while the debt was repaid. So, as I meditate on forgiveness today, I am
connecting forgiveness with patience.
When we have done something wrong, we need to ask for patience on the
part of who we have wronged, so that we have an opportunity to make what was
wrong right again. And then we need to
work diligently to correct the wrong.
And when we are asked for forgiveness, we too must offer patience, to
give someone an opportunity to correct what was done wrong, to make
restitution, to make amends. And how
many chances do we give someone to make amends—at least 490 of them. What if a person isn’t sorry? Well, let me answer this by examining the
relationship we have with God. We all
sin against God. When we go to God to
ask forgiveness, we should be asking for the opportunity to change. It does little good to ask for forgiveness
without planning to change. How can I
ask God for something as big as His forgiveness, without offering Him something
in return, an effort to make a change in my behavior? I believe God offers not only second and third
chances, but an infinite number of chances to those who sincerely try to get on
the right path, even when they get off it again and again and again.
Perhaps
the easiest way to understand forgiveness is to examine the Lord’s Prayer—each
time we say the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to “Forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who trespass against us.”
What does that mean? It means
forgive us our trespasses because we are forgiving those who trespass against
us. But more specifically it means, forgive
us trespasses IN THE SAME MANNER as we forgive those who trespass against
us. Be patient with us and we will be
patient with those who come to us for forgiveness. Be as patient with us as we are willing to be
with those who have wronged us and come to us asking us to be patient with
them.
The
moral of the story is that forgiveness involves willingness to make things
right and this involves patience. When
we make a mistake, we are to ask the one we have wronged to be patient with us
so we can make whatever was wrong right.
And when one has wronged us, and they come to us asking for a way back,
we are supposed to offer them a way back and patiently wait for them to travel
that path back.
One
concluding thought—it’s seems that “I’m sorry” is getting harder and harder to
say. Perhaps that is because we think we
won’t be forgiven, so instead of apologizing, we either lie, tell a partial
truth, or find a mitigating circumstance to make our wrong somehow justifiable. We are all guilty of this. Perhaps if we could all be more patient with
wrongdoings, it would make it easier for us to be honest when we’ve done
wrong. And when we’ve done wrong, if we
could just be honest, maybe it would be easier for sincere forgiveness to be
offered us. There isn’t a day when we do
not need forgiveness, or when we don’t need to forgive someone else. That’s why in the Lord’s prayer, we pray for
four things we need each day—daily bread, forgiveness of sins, to be led away
from temptation, and delivered from evil.
The
greatest sin in the world is a sin against God—and all sins are sins against
God. The greatest forgiveness in the
world is the forgiveness that comes from God.
If we know that God can forgive us when we ask Him, then we have to be
able to forgive those who ask us for forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness is when we ask for
patience while we make a plan to change.
Granting forgiveness is when we offer patience to offer someone a chance
to start over by making a plan to change.
Sin is failure to love and missing the mark. Repentance is making a change and working our
way back towards God. May God forgive
each of us and may He give us the patience and the humility to ask one another
for forgiveness when we’ve done wrong and to grant forgiveness when we are
asked. Amen.